APRIL 20 1990Local H's first show at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater. It's for Earth Day, which was a big deal this year. At this point, the band is a 4-piece: Joe Daniels on drums, Matt Garcia on Bass, John Sparkman on guitar, and Scott on vocals and guitar. Songs include Pop Top and Oil And Water. The highlight of the show is when Matt hands the bass off to Scott and takes the mic for a couple of 7 Seconds songs.

APRIL 4 1991By this point, John Sparkman has left the band, leaving Scott to take over full guitar duties. Now a trio, we head to Short Order Recorder in Zion - the studio owned by hometown heroes, Shoes - with Jeff Murphy engineering. This is our second time at the studio with Jeff, after the Pop Top/Ears session with Sparkman on guitar, and we decide to record 9 songs in one day. The songs range from moody REM-like ballads to alarmingly peppy pop-punk tunes. Of the 9 (known as The Scratch Demos), only 3 will see the light of day: 1st Amendment Jitters, Ralph, and Elephant end up on the Drum 7-inch EP – released almost a year later by San Francisco label, One World Communications. By the time it comes out, we've moved on, and no longer feel represented by the recording. But the plodding riff and pre-ThrashMaster feedback of Elephant (along with Matt's subscription to the Sub Pop Singles Club) point towards things to come. Lyrically, the track shows Scott's mistrust of the GOP already in full bloom, even if humor has yet to make its way into the mix. What's so funny about the track? The way Scott's voice makes him sound like an emo Geddy Lee. Get that kid some whiskey.

OUR OLD LOGOOur old logo designed for us by Kevin Seconds. And where exactly does the name come from anyway? There's a lot of bullshit theories - and we're mainly to blame. Is it a train that killed a carload of kids in Zion? Is it a reference to hospitals? Does it have anything to do with hemorrhoids? Nothing that interesting. The short answer: An REM tribute by way of Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd got their name by combining the first names of two blues artists - Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. We decided to take that idea and apply it to two REM songs. Oddfellows Local 151 and Swan Swan H. Incidentally, that also helps to explain Scott's Twitter handle. And it's that simple. Wish it was a better story.

SPRING OF 1992Now we're getting warm. In the spring of 1992, we take 7½ songs to Windy City Recording Co. in Chicago, with our buddy Dave Lulek, and lay down what would later be released as The '92 Demos by G&P Records. But back then, it's released on cassette, and simply known as Is. Perhaps we gave it that title because we finally feel that we had recorded something that represented us fairly. It's still pretty rudimentary, but all the seeds are there. Pummeling drums, heavier guitars, more screaming – and more feedback. Highlights include the Metallica rip, Bigger, and the classic rock swagger of Congressman (a song that Scott and Joe would later record as a two piece). But the best example of the chemistry we had as a three piece is displayed on this early version of User. The band plays together but rarely in unison, making for a spikier kind of heaviness. It's a formula that Matt and Scott had messed with in 1987 with their high school band, Rude Awakening, but it comes to fruition on User which segues nicely into the instrumental, and live show closer, Heavy Machinery. The real action, however, takes place on the flip side of the cassette, a recording of a live all-ages show from a couple of months earlier at a VFW hall in Gurnee with Lunkhead and Bruce Lamont's old band, Dyslexic Apaches. The energy of that performance exposes the weakness of the recordings on side A. Mainly we just weren't that comfortable in the studio yet. But put us in front of an audience, especially one as batshit crazy awesome as the one at that VFW show, and you could see that something was happening. To this day, the energy and chaos of that one show would forever cement the idea of what kind of band we wanted to be. Or maybe you just had to be there.

AUGUST 4 1992Our first TV appearance. We head into the Zion public access studio and record a set showcasing our fuzzy, post-ThrashMaster distortion-pedal sound – as well as our hair-farming abilities. You can hear us moving towards a dirge-like heaviness that doesn't leave much room for hooks and melody. But we're clearly having fun making a racket in our indie-rock T-shirts and short pants. There might be only one recording of the song Wish, but its lyrical ideas concerning fate and karmic revenge would crop up later in I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are and Hands On The Bible.

JANUARY 26 1993And then there were two. Not long after his final show in January of 1993, Matt Garcia quits the band. Now what do we do?

MARCH 1993What now? Without a bass player, we head right back into the Shoes studio with Jeff Murphy to record our heaviest set of songs yet. Four tunes: Strict-9, a second version of Mayonnaise And Malaise, Feed (a song we'd been playing with Matt, except tuned down now) and Sports Bar. Except for Feed, the songs are a bit more complex than what we'd been doing – and melody is starting to creep back into the mix. Strict-9, especially, shows us fusing our black hole riffage with tunefulness and a renewed sense of song craft. Also note the soon to be abandoned Dear Prudence quote at the end. Scott's handling the bass parts, but the band hasn't yet hit on the idea to be a full-fledged duo. As a result, the songs aren't designed for a two-piece band - there's too much reliance on guitar solos and non-unison guitar and bass parts - and playing live isn't much of an option. The search for someone to replace Matt is half-hearted at best. Our roll has officially slowed. It should be noted, that during this time, a third person began hanging around at practice sessions. God's gift to rock was already in the house.

SUMMER/FALL 1993In a virtual state of paralysis, we send our latest 4-song demo to all of our favorite indie labels: Sub Pop, Matador (Scott's favorite), Cargo, etc. No one bites. These are dark times. Even Joe quits at one point over a particularly heated and idiotic argument with Scott over, of all things, the band Belly. We swallow our indie rock pride and decide to send the demo out to some majors – and whaddya know? We finally get a response. Interscope likes the demo and wants to come out and see us play. One problem: No bass player. Matt's not coming back and every other guy we try out has a mullet. Sparked by an offhand remark from Joe about cloning Scott, the idea to stay a duo is floated. We book a show at the Avalon in Chicago and try to figure out how to pull this thing off. A couple of years back, Scott had seen a two-piece from Athens – The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies – and remembered being impressed at how entertaining a band with only two people could be. But how do we make it heavy? We were aware of Flat Duo Jets. We were fans of The Spinanes. But neither of those bands were as heavy as we wanted to be. The answer as to why was simple: No bass. We had to figure out a way to get that bass. We decide to pay a visit to our friend Toby Flescher, who used to play with us in high school and was now working at a music store. We're convinced that splitting the signal through an octave pedal into a bass amp will give us the desired effect. It doesn't. It works great with single note riffs, but with chords, it sounds like a muddy mess. A light bulb goes off in Toby's head and he suggests installing a bass pickup that would isolate the bottom two strings - sending a signal out of a separate jack, which could then be fed through the octave pedal and into the bass amp. That sounded just about right. Scott leaves his $150 black Ibanez telecaster, and Toby goes to work with his router.

SEPTEMBER 3 1993Our first show as a two piece (sort of). Armed with the Toby-modified tele, we play a show in the Cabaret Lounge at the Avalon in Chicago to a room full of our friends and an A&R guy from Interscope. The guitar/bass set up is crude and has a long way to go (hey, we're STILL working on it) – and our decision to end the set with Frampton's Do You Feel Like We Do with Gabe on drums and Joe scatting the solo is ill-advised at best – but we end up having a blast. The A&R guy brings along another guy who's interested in managing us, and we go out for a bite after the show. The first comment? You guys are gonna get a bass player, right? The deal falls apart.

WINTER 1993Pulling our shit together, we decide to continue gigging as a duo - also, we start recording again, this time for a proposed full length. Back in the Shoes studio with Jeff, we record a 4 song set that includes Manipulator, a new version of User, and a weird tune called Ray Milland. The session is especially notable for two reasons. Possibly due to the influence of bands like Iceburn and Nuisance, Joe's snare is tuned up tighter than a gerbil butt. And the second reason? Finally, we hit upon the definitive Local H song: Cynic. Containing all the elements - a frenetic riff, a hooky chorus, peripatetic drumming, lyrics drowning in self-doubt, screaming, feedback, a touch of psychedelia and an even heavier riff in the bridge - Cynic is the sound of the band finally finding its identity. It's ground zero for the new Local H. Best of all? It features a structure that finally lends itself to being pulled off live by a two-piece band. Things are finally starting to click.

MARCH 1994We're way into Slip by Quicksand, so we try sending our demo straight to their A&R guy at Polydor records. Some dude named Joe Bosso. Amazingly, this works. A plain envelope containing a cassette tape (no case) drops on Bosso's desk. He almost doesn't open it – but, of course, he does - and within a couple of weeks, he's in Chicago to see us play. We click instantly with him and Bosso decides to say fuck it and virtually signs us on the spot. He asks us to go back to Short Order Recorder and re-record some of the already demoed songs. Polydor is merging with Island, and while he assures us that this is a good thing, he still wants a better sounding demo to play for his new colleagues and garner support at the changing label. The merger with Island actually does turn out to be a good thing (the only time in our career that will ever turn out to be the case), and we're happy to take a second stab at these tunes – our last round of demos, while containing our best songs to date, seemed to be a step in the wrong sonic direction. Bosso picks his favorites: Cynic, User, Manipulator, and Feed (we also shove a new song, Believe You Me, into the session) - and this time, we get it right. The performances are better and we move away from a suffocating sound to something more explosive. We still have more to learn about the studio than we could possibly know - but, after four years, we finally feel ready to make a proper debut.

JANUARY 24 1995HAM FISTED. Nearly five years after our first show, comes our first full length and major label debut. We pick Steve Haigler to produce because of his work on Quicksand's Slip and Doolittle by The Pixies. He suggests Reflection Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina and we are totally down with that because REM recorded their first two records there. The record is raw, grainy and gets written off as a Nirvana rip. And while it's true that we have yet to fully digest our influences — any record that starts off with a song like Feed is practically begging to be compared to Bleach - there are reasons to be hopeful. The previously recorded Strict-9 and Cynic lay the groundwork for every record to come. Named by Joe after Scott's affinity for poppy Matador bands like Pavement, Guided By Voices, Bettie Serveert and Teenage Fanclub, Scott-Rock is a welcome step forward in embracing our pop roots and has a vocal recorded in the same stairwell that Michael Stipe sang So. Central Rain. And so is the third version of Mayonnaise And Malaise, now set to a Pavement influenced riff that was laughed out of the practice spot of the 3-piece Local H. And speaking of Pavement, there would probably be no Skid Marks if it weren't for Conduit For Sale off of Slanted And Enchanted - of course, that song wouldn't exist without The Classical by The Fall, so whatever. Capping off our Matador obsession is the track Chicago Fanphair '93, written immediately after seeing a show by Liz Phair and Red Red Meat at The Metro. The tension between the Drive Like Jehuesque hardcore of the verse and the REM jangle of the chorus make Chicago Fanphair, possibly, the most interesting song on the album. And while it ends with the gentle ode to Kathleen Hanna, Grrrlfriend, for the most part our pop instincts are kept in check and we opt for bludgeoning power. We get by on the energy of the performances, but in the end, the record comes off as a bit monochromatic - just like the cover. But it's where we chose to start — by saying no. One final note: While mixing the record in Stamford, Connecticut, Scott hears an advance tape of Shudder To Think's Pony Express Record and is overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and depression. The next record will be different.

1995While Gabe Rodriguez's only appearance on Ham Fisted is a whistle blow on Cynic, live he is an unofficial third member. This was probably due to seeing a Pavement show at The Lounge Ax and deciding that Gabe could be our Bob Nastanovich - or our Bez. Whatever the case, since he was hanging around anyway, we decided to put him to work on tambourine, backup vox and kazoo. This only ended up confusing people who were already wondering where the fuck the bass player was - and it certainly didn't endear us to metalheads in the audience when we toured with Corrosion Of Conformity. But what are you gonna do? Maybe we were just never cut out for the big leagues. Anyway, we spend most of the year playing to empty rooms with sets that usually end with us covering In And Out Of Grace by Mudhoney or Rocket From The Crypt’s Circa: Now front to back. Goddamn, it was fun.

AUGUST 1995In Minneapolis, on the last date of a tour with Tripping Daisy and UFOFU, we get the call that after only six months, Island is going to stop working our record. We'd gotten some spins at Q101 with Mayonnaise And Malaise, but not much else. The record is dead. The upside is that they want us to make another record (ahhh, the good old days of artist development!), so we go to Andy Gerber's home studio to record some demos. We don't have a lot, but what we have is pretty good: a song about assholes in the pit called High-Fiving Motherfucker, Nothing Special, Lovey Dovey, No Problem, Freeze Dried (F)lies (named after the hibernating flies in the windowsill of Scott's tiny Zion apartment) and a perky tune called Bound For The Floor. Built on a chord shape lifted from Andy Summers and featuring a word borrowed from Velocity Girl, this early version of Bound isn't quite there yet. It needs some tightening, and Joe Bosso, the consummate A&R man and an invaluable editor, will suggest losing the bridge. But the riff is there and the hook is hammered home like a sonofabitch. Can't say that we had any idea that it would be our meal ticket, though.

FALL 1995Joe Bosso is very excited by what he hears and wants to fast-track us into the studio to start recording our second record. Maybe he wants to move quick before anybody at the label has time to shut us down, but he urges us to keep writing so we can be in the studio by November. It all seems insanely fast, but we actually do come up with new material. We don't even bother to go back into the studio to do proper demos - Scott won a karaoke machine singing House Of The Rising Sun at a work party, and he uses it and Joe's drums to record a rough demo of Eddie Vedder (which mysteriously disappears). We also use the machine to record a garbled Back In The Day, I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are and an early version of Fritz's Corner. Tentatively titled Townie, this early version of Fritz's is almost identical to the album version, except for the wipeout-like drum pattern on the verses. A week later, Joe decides to scrap that and pull a War Pigs - accent the guitar slashes and leave nothing but empty space under the vocal - and the song comes alive. Bosso declares us ready to roll tape.

APRIL 16 1996AS GOOD AS DEAD. Our make or break record. We return to the Carriage House in Stamford, Connecticut to begin recording our second full length. Since we were so knocked out by Shudder To Think's Pony Express Record, we initially ask Ted Nicely to produce. But he writes us off as a novelty band because of High Fiving Mother Fucker, so we ask Steve Haigler if he's up for another go round. He is. To mix things up, we enlist Tom Lord-Alge to mix - he did a bang up job on that first Figdish record. For a record that contains it's share of filler, As Good As Dead hangs together remarkably well - but the fact remains, we barely had enough songs going into the studio and three songs were put together at the last minute. O.K. is pieced together from lyrics written in high school and a chugging rhythm stolen from Pavement's Here. Manifest Density Pt 1 was written after Scott woke up post-party on Joe's floor. The other side of the bookend, the Part 2 jam, was conceived as a cross between Kyuss and The Cure, and it's Density NOT Destiny. You Back To The Future fans know what we're talking about. Not that the record is short on tunes. High Fiving secured us the Stone Temple Pilots tour (it also supplied Weiland with Jimmy Was A Stimulator off his first solo record). Fritz's Corner is still one of our best songs and Bound For The Floor got us played until you wanted to puke. There's also our second stab at Scott-Rock with Eddie Vedder, featuring lyrics lifted from a discarded song called The Prince. If I was Eddie Vedder would you like me any better? Well, fuck you to the both of you and Prince can kiss my ass. Back In The Day was written after an afternoon sitting around reading Maximum Rock & Roll. Touring with C.O.C. and an awesome Joan Crawford movie spawned I Saw What You Did And I Know You Are. It's also a bit of a rewrite of both Wish and Chicago Fanphair. We even had the balls to go acoustic for No Problem, a tune that was inspired by Red Red Meat's Braindead. We put toothpaste on the strings to get that dead sound. We threw everything in the pot and didn't try to hide who we were. It's all there. Classic rock, grunge, pop, punk, metal, indie, balladeering, and even some shoe-gazery. Wrap that up with a loose concept about our hometown and you have the near perfect Local H album. Almost.

MAY 31 1997As Good As Dead kept us touring for a good year and a half. We spent about six months touring to empty rooms (Limblifter and Stanford Prison Experiment), half-empty rooms (Shift and Orange 9mm), and opening for Salt. And then Bound For The Floor hit. After that, we became the opening band du-jour and it was nearly impossible to stop until a year later. Not everybody enjoyed everything, but the WHFStival in D.C. was the one day we decided to seize the moment and appreciate a ride that couldn't last forever. Rosemont Horizon and Madison Square Garden with STP were pretty cool, too. Pretty sure that this would be the last time we got to play RFK stadium. We adopted an Ozzy Osbourne rallying cry Let's have a party! and threw down. Stormed the stage like pirates. Stole wine from The Cardigans. Smoked out with Jamiroquai. Almost fainted when Debbie Harry said Hi in the hall. Performed a killer Matt Pinfield impression for Matt Pinfield. Got in a screaming match with Beck's stage manager when they kicked everybody off the stage. Took the blue pill during Prodigy. Carjacked a golf cart. Paid a carny for the full use of his helium tank. You know. Acted like rock star assholes. If HFS wasn't going to ask us back before, they DEFINITELY weren't going to ask us back now. It was a total blast - and well worth the brain cells.

FALL 1997Having squeezed every last bit of juice out of As Good As Dead, it is finally time to come home - except for Scott, who insists on serving another six months of road time playing guitar for Triple Fast Action. Nevertheless, it's time to write a follow up. Luckily, we have plenty of ideas. Inspired by Pink Floyd, Goodfellas/Boogie Nights and Mr. Show episodes, we decide to take the unifying ideas of our last record and blow them up into a full-fledged concept record, complete with a storyline and a never ending line of segues. Between Scott's tours with TFA, we book time into both Short Order Recorder and Andy Gerber's studio to record just 2 demos: Side 1 at Short Order and Side 2 at Gerber's original Million Yen in Rogers Park. We have yet to pick a producer, but listening to the demos, you can hear that we have a very strong sense of what the final record should be. Many of the segues are already worked out and almost all of the songs are there. As usual, there's some cutting that needs to be done - Hit The Skids, especially, is a bit overwritten - but if anything, it just shows that we were overflowing with ideas. Confidence is at an all time high.

ALL THE KIDS ARE RIGHTEveryone agrees that side 1 of Pack Up The Cats is good to go, but side 2 is a little weak. Joe Bosso suggests adding another verse to Lucky Time and, in an effort to save Laminate Man, we slow it down and give it the Taxman treatment. In typical Bosso fashion, he pushes for one more song. Scott had been going through a serious Stones phase and had a Keef riff that he'd been messing with. It was super poppy - maybe a little TOO poppy - but the bridge had a stone cold hook and something told us to go with it. The demo, called Lead Pipe Cinch, turned out great, but it just didn't feel like us. Maybe it was the lyrics. Written on bar napkins at Borderline, the standard issue lyrics about sitting at a bar drinking up the nerve to call an ex sounded like a lame country song. The same old shit. Something needed to be done. Besides, our story needed a climax. Think, dammit! The greatest rock song ever written is, quite possibly, Surrender by Cheap Trick. What makes it so great? The hook is unbeatable. For one - it soars. It has the most convincing key modulations in the history of pop. For two - they change keys right out of the gate, so it doesn't seem cheesy when they do it later. But those lyrics. They're brilliant. Funny, smart, and aware. Plus that refrain of We're all alright actually makes you feel like we're all alright. For just those few seconds anyway. And finally? The lyrics tell a story. A minor detail, but an important one. It was with that impossibly high bar in mind, that Scott began rewriting the lyrics to Lead Pipe Cinch on scrap pieces of paper while watching Scorsese's Kundun at the old Fine Arts Theater in Chicago. Originally titled All The Grunge Kids, it was a story song about a show gone wrong. The line All the grunge kids hold a grudge was taken from a newspaper headline concerning an ill-fated high school show that we'd played in '95. The headline read, Principal pulls plug, grunge kids hold grudge. Or something to that effect. Feeling like everyone was tired of the grunge tag, we dropped the grunge and appropriated The Who instead. Through the power of The Kids Are Alright, All The Grunge Kids became All The Kids Are Right. But we had yet to incorporate that smart-ass title into the song. That argument would come later. An early version of the song from the PUTC sessions incorporates I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are instead. Note that the bridge has now become the chorus. Why keep a good hook down? Thanks, Cheap Trick! While recording Pack Up The Cats, things were already changing over at Island. Universal had acquired Polygram and people were either losing their jobs, or worried they were about to. While we were in Atlanta mixing, we got a call from Bosso that the new president of the label had a suggestion about All The Kids. He wanted the title to be somewhere in the chorus. Maybe he didn't want a repeat of the Copacetic confusion, but he was insistent that the song wouldn't be a hit unless the chorus matched with the title. Scott, of course, pitched a fit and said, no fucking way. A vaguely threatening response came back about not releasing the record at all, and after a full day of seething, spitting and cursing - Scott capitulated. In the process, the third verse was strengthened and so was our resolve to be as unfriendly as possible to the new regime. But it didn't take long to realize that making the change was the right thing to do. All The Kids is one of our best songs, and adding that kicker to the chorus is one of the reasons why. After all, the lyrics had already been changed on this song so many times. Why stop now when we were so close? Nevertheless, we didn't like being told what to do - and these grunge kids could definitely hold a grudge.

SEPTEMBER 1 1998PACK UP THE CATS. Our major label masterpiece. With a bigger recording budget, top tier talent behind the boards in the form of Nick DiDia and the great Roy Thomas Baker, and our strongest batch of songs yet - our resources were finally in line with our ambitions. Which is good. Because, this time, we had major ambitions. Bound For The Floor had put us on the radio next to a lot of bands that we didn't particularly care for. We wanted to make a record that would separate us from the pack. Working with somebody outside of the current pool of hot producers was a good way to do that. And that's where RTB came in. We happened to hear Killer Queen one day on the radio, and that was it. Roy was our man. We defy you to name a more exciting piece of production than Killer Queen. Nope. Not even Bohemian Rhapsody. If he could handle Queen, our little concept record about a shitty mid-level band should be a breeze for him. To hedge our bets, we enlisted the man behind current hot producer Brendan O'Brien to engineer: Nick DiDia. The pairing turned out to be inspirational and he and Roy continued to work together long after we wrapped the record. Roy had a studio in Lake Havasu that was literally at the base of a mountain. It was like going to work at the Bat Cave. After Scott got over his initial disappointment that Roy couldn't make them sound like Queen, the sessions charged ahead with little distractions or drama. Roy kicked Scott's ass on vocals. This is the man who's worked with Freddie Mercury and Steve Perry, for chrissakes! The sound of Joe's drums hit like a ton of bricks (the secret is toilet paper). And the tunes? We had 'em. All Right (Oh, Yeah) had been a song that we'd been playing on the Veruca Salt tour, and that started the record off on the usual note of ambivalence. But this time, everything was spiked with a supercharged dose of pop voltage. Hit The Skids, All The Kids Are Right, She Hates My Job (inspired by a couple of shows we played with Juliana Hatfield) - we were closer than ever to that soaring kind of sound that we heard in our head. What Can I Tell You featured a riff that was familiar to anyone listening to the guitar/bass portion of soundchecks during the STP tour. Speaking of STP, Dean DeLeo would be the first person outside of the band to play on one of our records when he guested on the solo for Cool Magnet, our Day Tripper/Hair Of The Dog rip. We finally got Joe to use a cowbell - something Bosso had been trying to get him to do since High Fiving MF. Fine And Good and Lucky Time were songs that had initially been written for the Slingblade soundtrack. The original music Scott had written for Fine And Good would later be used for There You Are off of the second record by Scott Lucas & The Married Men. 500,000 Scovilles and Deep Cut had the scorched earth approach to paranoia that we'd all grown to love. Stoney was named for Stone Gossard after he told Nick that he wanted us to name a song after him this time. The instrumentation, the harmonies, the perfect flow of the production - the way the record was experimental without ever being self indulgent - it was everything we wanted. Maybe the sound was a little too clean and shiny, like Steve Haigler had suggested, but we were fine with that and perfectly willing to own it. Everyone at the label was convinced that this was going to take us to the next level. Of course, as we know now, that didn't happen. The merger with Universal and Polygram was happening and, to put it simply, we got lost in the shuffle. Almost everyone we knew at the label either quit or got fired, including our biggest champion: Joe Bosso. No one could concentrate on making us rock stars when they were worried about their jobs 24/7. Our support system had all but vanished. But maybe the fault was all ours. Maybe putting out a Cheap Trick inspired concept record about cats wasn't the smartest move in 1998. In the age of post-Limp Bizkit moop rock, maybe a record like Pack Up The Cats didn't stand a chance. Who knows? But listening to it now - listening to that beautiful ascending slide solo in those final sparkling Layla-esque moments of Lucky Time - it feels like the perfect kiss off to our major label days, and the classiest fuck off we could've possibly mustered. Thanks for the fish, guys.

JUNE 24 1999Wounded and exhausted after a year of shrinking crowds, dwindling radio and label support, and a distinct leveling off from the whirlwind highs of the As Good As Dead tour - we pull into the Metro for one more show. It will be Joe's last. And so the question again: now what?

FALL 1999Brian St. Clair. After Joe's departure over the summer, the idea is to move forward as quickly as possible. Since Scott had already toured with Triple Fast Action for six months, Brian St. Clair is the obvious choice but after Triple Fast Action broke up, Brian quit drumming and went to work for Liz Phair and Cheap Trick. A fairly intensive audition process is initiated. Kelly from Failure is approached. So is Davey from Stanford Prison Experiment. But nothing seems to be clicking. Herb and Wes convince Scott to give Brian a call. He does, and surprisingly, Brian says he'll come in for an audition. After playing only one song, Cool Magnet, the job is Brian's if he wants it. He calls Cheap Trick on the spot to let them know he'll be quitting. Practicing and writing starts immediately (our first song is Son Of Cha!) and we're playing shows with Brian by September. His first gig is in Iowa City and Hello Everyone is the first song of the set.

SPRING 2000After Island merges with Def Jam, we present them with a demo of thirteen songs at the beginning of 2000. We have no one left at the label, so we play hardball and tell them this is the album - take it or leave it. They leave it. This is the exact reaction we were looking for. We record five more songs and go shopping for labels. Most of the Island people have already followed Chris Blackwell over to his new label, Palm Pictures, and that is where we want to go, too. We take a few obliging meetings with other labels, but in the end, our first instinct wins out and we go with Palm. Anyone who has ever seen a Metallica documentary that doesn't include a crack-pot therapist will recognize our new A&R guy: Michael Alago. He asks for more songs and we send a new batch of songs that includes Keep Your Girlfiend and Half-Life. We now have over twenty songs for a proposed 10 song record. We think we're more than ready. Michael calls and says we're not ready. He needs a couple more from us. Scott gets pissed and goes to see Almost Famous to try and fall in love with rock and roll again. After he cools down, we shuffle around the chords of Manifest Density and I Put A Spell On You to try and come up with the weirdest song we can think of. It's Hands On The Bible and Michael loves it. After a year of bullshit, we're finally off to the races again.

MARCH 5 2002HERE COMES THE ZOO. And we're back. An attempt to get back to the basics - not just in terms of the band, but in terms of rock music in general. Conceived as a no frills rock record modeled after Back In Black and Led Zeppelin IV, we jettisoned our conceptual leanings (or tried to) and concentrated on the meat. Like Back In Black, it was limited to ten songs (all in minor keys, btw) - but like Zep IV, it had two distinct rhyming sides that both end with long songs. There was a great conversation with Chris Goss about producing - as well as an intense talk with Josh Homme in the Liar's Club basement about him taking the job. But then we heard that Jack Douglas wanted to do it. Jack motherfucking Douglas. As soon as Jack expressed interest, we really couldn't say no. As much as we love the idea of a Josh Homme produced Zoo, we felt a distinct need to prove ourselves after all the changes we'd gone through in the last few years. We didn't want to be seen as riding on his coattails. Doubling down on our legend quota, we were more than happy to go along with Jack's suggestion to hire Jay Messina. With the team behind Aerosmith's Rocks at our side, we loaded into It Is What It Is Studios in Weehawken, New Jersey to record our new as yet, unnamed album. It would also be our first record with our new drummer, but Brian wouldn't be the only new presence on the record. Since the Pack Up The Cats tour, when we brought along Wes Kidd to cover guitar solos and harmonies, Local H had become a bit of an open circle with various friends and musicians joining us on stage, and we wanted the new record to reflect that. We were joined by Wes and Josh, as well as Shanna from Sullen, Simi from Suffrajett, and our buddy Maxton Koc. Gabe was there for the first time in the flesh. We even got Jerry Only to stop by on his way to his Grandma's Sunday gravy. Everything was in place. The songs were road-tested and we were confident. But then things started to go wrong. Equipment started to break down. Sessions would stall out. At one point Jack said, We're gonna need a bigger boat - and we switched studios. We would switch studios 3 more times before the record was finished. For the first time, we lost control of the recording process and we couldn't figure out why. Was it really just the pressure of proving that we still had it after being away for so long? Were we overcompensating by tamping down on our pop tendencies and just focusing on making this big RAWK record? While we were recording at Skyline in New York, Scott went to see the Strokes at Bowery Ballroom and, much like after hearing Shudder To Think's record during the mixing of Ham Fisted, he grew depressed and utterly disillusioned. Realizing that he was making a record that had no place in the current landscape, he lost all perspective. But it was too late. The record was almost finished, and there was no turning back now. Over budget and over time, we finally tapped out and handed the tapes over to Nick DiDia. Of course, Nick got the job done but it would be a long time before the record could be heard with fresh ears. Now it's easy to hear that we pretty much achieved what we set out to do. The side-closing epics, Baby Wants To Tame Me and What Would You Have Me Do, are two of our best songs - especially the latter - even if it does chicken out from the no concept rule by reintroducing melodic threads from nearly all the other songs during the mind-scramble curtain call section. Rock & Roll Professionals is one of our funniest and most scathing songs. The triple-tracked drums on Hands On The Bible is just one of the perfect things that Brian does throughout the album. This record really is the perfect introduction for him. Keep Your Girlfriend is our most twisted critique yet of macho bullshit. Half-Life, Creature Comforted, Bryn-Mawr Stomp - there's a lot of brutal stuff on here. And that's what we were going for. There's not a lot of texture, but it's smart. It's not like we remade Ham Fisted. There is SOME progress. And after all these years, you know what? The record sounds great. Wish there was some way to go back there and tell us that.

MAY 27 2003The NO FUN EP. Minute for minute, our angriest record ever. The fact that it's only 28 minutes long doesn't really take away from its sustained fury. So what were so pissed about? After an insanely ridiculous argument over the unauthorized use of OK in a hip hop documentary Palm was releasing, we are once again without a label. Rather than go through another four years of limbo, we decide to record an EP and put it out with Thick Records. It's a decidedly garage affair, cobbled together from punk covers and songs written during the Here Comes The Zoo demo sessions. An emerging interest in psychedelic techno, sparked by an unhealthy five-year obsession with Primal Scream's XTRMNTR, can be heard not only on the coda of the first track, No Fun but all over the EP's most interesting track Fuck Yeah, That Wide. Lifting its title from a Mr. Show episode, Fuck Yeah would go on to be a fireball of a live song. Nearly every show from this period would close with Scott leading the crowd in an extended chant of motherfucking soul, followed by a crowd-surf back to the merch table! Speaking of chants, it wasn't rare to hear another slogan around this time. Fuck George Bush! President Forever was not originally planned to be on the EP, and wasn't even actually written about Bush. It was conceived as a kind of Home Alone In The White House satirical thing. But with the recent invasion of Iraq, and how the President seeming to be channelling a clueless Kevin McAllister, the song felt eerily prescient and we went back into Million Yen to record the song and rush it onto the EP. This was originally going to force Cooler Heads (a prequel to California Songs) off the release, but Brian dug in his heels. It was his favorite song. It had already been left off Zoo. He was't going to let that happen again.

APRIL 6 2004Whatever Happened To PJ Soles? Our first full length with Andy Gerber and our first recorded in Chicago. Recording started at Million Yen in February 2003, three months before the release of The No Fun EP. Tracking wouldn't be finished until November. The longest we've ever taken. The time was well spent. PJ Soles may be our richest, most textured album yet. Following the Houses Of The Holy playbook, and more than aware that we were hopelessly out of sync with radio, we felt free to follow our every whim and open up our sonic palette like never before - striving to make every song sound different from the last. The record is littered with tiny details and left turns. The harmonica and quintupled drum rolls on Money On The Dresser, the clipped intro to Heavy Metal Bakesale, the many vocal treatments, and the production is resourceful and inventive. From the hip-hop needle skips in the beat of the album opener, Where Are They Now?, to the Beach Boys allusion in the bass tone on California Songs - nothing was out of bounds. On top of that is a songwriting spectrum that hits on everything from stoned epics (Buffalo Trace, That's What They All Say) to scorched-earth rockers (Everyone Alive, How's The Weather Down There) to mournful pop (PJ Soles, Halcyon Days). Not to mention, Scott was finally coming into his own as a vocalist. He no longer sounded like a twelve year old. But even with all that to recommend, it remains our most misunderstood and underrated record. Maybe people were expecting the the slick wallop of Here Comes The Zoo, but we had little interest in making a record like that. Our major label days were over. And besides - whatever the record lacks in punch is made up for in variety. It's been suggested many times that we should remix it, that it's too lo-fi. But a George Lucas-like bit of revisionism would only betray the album's themes of resilience and graceful aging. It's our headphone symphony and Scott's favorite Local H record. Just let it be.

SUMMER 2006The idea for the next record has been stewing since the release of PJ Soles and the songs have been coming together slowly. An effort is made to pull the threads together so we can begin rehearsing and recording. We stopped doing proper demos after Here Comes The Zoo. We had come down with a major case of demoitis. Scott wants to put some ideas down and run them by everybody. So he grabs his acoustic guitar and records a demo of Michelle (Again) on Garage Band. It sounds like Scottish indie-rock for toddlers for 2 reasons. #1. Scott is trying to keep his voice down so as not to disturb the neighbors. And #2. For the first time since the Eddie Vedder demo, Scott tries his hand at the drum track. Drummers HATE when you do this.

MAY 13 200812 Angry Months. After the sprawl of Whatever Happened To PJ Soles, we tighten up and pull in the focus, which was no easy feat considering this record was made with five different engineers in 3 different studios with no real producer to oversee the sessions. Chalk it up to some valiant mixing by Micah Wilshire, an excellent mastering job by Mark Chalecki, and a rock solid concept to keep it all together. After a particularly hard breakup during the release of PJ Soles, Scott hatched a plan to make a breakup record to match the acidic anger of records like Dylan's Blood On The Tracks and Marvin Gaye's divorce record Here, My Dear. And that mission is nearly accomplished on the first track alone: The One With Kid. If not our best, at least in our top five. Kid starts off like a typical forlorn, sad sack breakup song before the second half twists around and snaps your head off with pettiness and venom. The performance is truly vicious and Brian's drums are phenomenal. Add to that, lyrics about stolen Kyuss records that provide the proper dose of humor. The song title itself is a reference to The Pretenders. You'd be forgiven for thinking the rest of the record is superfluous. But coming in hot, Michelle (Again) and BMW Man inject a sense of fun and levity that seemed lost on everyone who criticized the record for being a one-note affair. Sure things get dark again after that with White Belt Boys, which actually is a bit of a one-noter, but still manages to mix Prince's Sign O Times, Beyonce's Naughty Girl, Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, and Shout At The Devil by the Crue into a steamy cauldron of piss. Immediately after that, Summer Of Boats lets a little light in with some truly gentle lyrics and a bit of balladry. That doesn't last long, though. Taxi-Cabs is like Looking For Mr. Good Bar on Clark Street and contains some of Scott's favorite lyrics: Taxi cabs are sharks of streets with fins of fire, they troll for fares. The reference to drug-covered Harry Nilsson records in that song give way to another Nilsson reference with Jesus Christ! Did You See The SIZE Of That Sperm Whale - The records nastiest song and a tip of the hat to Jesus Christ You're Tall. Lots of music references on this album. Simple Pleas keeps it civil with some Faces offkey chorusing, before soaring into a gospel-tinged second half that tries to come anywhere within spitting distance of The Beautiful Ones. Those are fake names for the back-up singers, btw - it's all Scott. Machine Shed Wrestling mixes a clumsy metaphor for masturbation with late '70s Stones and To Bring You My Love era PJ Harvey. Blur gives us one last shot of ugly before the record settles down and gets all Zen with Hand To Mouth, our best Echo & The Bunnymen imitation. It's not all so angry, is it? It's definitely one our strongest conceptual records and the punch that people found missing on PJ Soles is returned, albeit with some of that record's handcrafted edges sanded off. Wilshire's mix spiffies up the room, even employing some '90s methods not heard since Tom Lord-Alge's work on As Good As Dead. But, he holds back from giving it that anonymous, factory-ready sheen. A real and honest record for the lovelorn that spins the micro into the macro. Our next album would take that formula and totally reverse it..

SEPTEMBER 18 2012Hallelujah! I'm A bum. After 12 Angry Months and two introspective solo records by Scott with the Married Men, it was high time to get our noses out of our navels and look at what was going on around us. It's not the first time the band had gotten political. Beside President Forever, there was Half-Life and the vague working-class leanings of Bound For The Floor and Nothing Special. It's the first time we had devoted an entire record explicitly to the subject. Given the current climate of understanding and bipartisanship in this country, this caused people to dismiss the record without ever giving it a chance. After recording some demos for the record, Andy Gerber took himself out of the process, and we went looking for a producer. There was a meeting with Johnny K at his studio but that approach didn't feel right for the material. Scott had become enamored of the metal scene in Chicago and approached Sanford Parker about producing. To our surprise, he really wanted the job. We set up shop in the final days of Engine Studios during a particularly brutal Chicago winter and went to work. The results are decidedly not commercial. The songs have hooks, but stop just short of being anthemic, Cold Manor and Another February excepted. In freely giving ourselves over to Sanford's filter, it has a monolithic sound that's as thick and airless as anything we'd done since Ham Fisted. But, man, does it get the point across. It's also the most complex of our concept records. It's a record about how politics affect our every day life. It's a double record. It's not as long as The Wall, but longer than Exile In Guyville. Disc 1 is blue and disc 2 is red, signifying our twin party political system, as well as two lines on the Chicago El system. Disc one has a fall side and a winter side with songs about cold and winter and depression. Disc two has a spring and summer side with songs about hot summers, violence, and anger. And there's dogs. Lots of dogs. You could consider this Pack Up The Dogs. And while it's not as energized as Pack Up The Cats, it's also not as shallow or self-obsessed. It's one of the few records in our catalogue that repeatedly takes the point of view of a character. There's the brother in Night Flight To Paris who goes into politics because his older brother, who he idolizes, checks out of the system, and moves to Paris. There's the family of bartenders struggling to keep the car running in Another February. There's the crackpot borderline-racist old guy living in a changing neighborhood of toughs and punks who talks to his TV in Paddy Considine. Maybe it's presumptuous but, over and over, there's an effort to see outside of the world view of just a dude in a band. Adding to the album's density is the extensive use of sound to paint a picture to give the feeling that you really are there - either riding the subway in Chicago or walking under it. The guy who talks about freezing to death at the beginning of Another February was just some random dude who started talking to Scott on the train, for example. Luckily, Scott was already recording the sound of riding on the El when it happened. Limit Your Change employs loops, heavy riffage, and sax-skronk to weave a collage of paranoia and insulation. Here Come 'Ol Laptop risks bad taste by mixing metal-funk with Chicago horns. The forlorn nature of the vocal in Blue Line is recast as vibrating rage in Trash Fire Bummers, the first tune on the Red disc. There's even a long overdue foray into country music on Look Who's Walking On Four Legs Again aided in no small part by the Married Men. And even more dogs. But for all of the weirdness, buried beneath the fuzz are songs like Cold Manor, Sad History, and especially Waves Again. They contain some of the most beautiful and elegant melodies we've ever committed to tape. And let's not forget that cover! The perfect metaphor for the album and a fitting tribute to a fine pooch. There's a lot to chew on, but this might be the last word when it comes to Local H concept records.

November 8, 2013Ryan's first show. Less than a month after Brian's last performance, we're up and running again with our new drummer: Ryan Harding. Having previously toured with us in the bands Sullen and Short & Sweet, Ryan is the obvious choice. No one else is auditioned. No one else is considered. We start recording new stuff by the end of March, 2014, and two weeks later, we release a new single --a cover of Lorde's "Team".